The Arched World

by Davi Cao

  Once by their side, both aWa and uiTiu placed their free hands on the backs of the others. They followed the ou.uo's orientation, fast enough to enter in orbit, becoming a binary moon in the five people's planetary system. After one whole revolution, aWa held the hand of one female human, linking herself with the chain, taking uiTiu along.

  They gathered in seven now, instead of five, all smiling with their gaze turned to the horizon, all ready to walk again. In unison, an army of wanderers, they matched steps and advanced on the land. Their calmness served as the perfect counterweight to the bustling ou.uo circling them.

  The humans walked one by the side of the other, forming a straight wall of people. The ous increased speed and widened their orbits, keeping their trajectories in harmony with their vision of beauty, formed by circles, arches, and variety. At one point, they nearly hit the external humans, at another point they went far away from them and felt weak, energy struggling to affect their flight.

  With the new additions, the ou.uo became richer, covered in an almost permanent layer of healing dust, capable of producing and storing more honey. All humans had backpacks, packed to the limit of their carrying capacity. If the ou.uo loaded more, the people's muscles would falter and the group would dissolve.

  The ecosystem had sprinklers, a special kind of ou that drank honey and spilled it on the celestial ring of their orbits, bestowing the whole of their kind with access to future, past, present and the imaginary.

  At every new addition, infinity revealed another aspect of itself. It called for them, it seduced the ou.uo. Although they still needed plenty more honey to join the great brotherhood of the Great Timeless OU.UO, they could already shape the land to their liking, peeking through the window of time until finding a place that suited their expectations.

  They could speak with their near future selves about the joy of their gathering, they could use the power of their ecosystem to project images of the col.loc’s monster. They saw the ou.uo span through the end of ages and the thought of eternal awareness was the ultimate delight. An image shaped their imaginary, a clear image, one of union with the humans, the ou.uo and the humans embraced in a common identity, essential parts of the same goal. Infinity presented their children with beauty.

  A seven people's ou.uo could afford uselessness, rare ous who performed pointless tasks. They spun in orbit for the pleasure of existence, for the simple purpose of looking nice. Others discovered that the ground held not only possibilities of manipulation, but also of construction.

  By pilling scavenged matter with honey ligaments and dust coating, they erected a small tower in front of the walking humans. It soon disappeared as the human line advanced without regard to the marvelous galaxy under their power, and the potential of a fixed existence, one where they didn’t have to wander through the world forever, lured the ou.uo.

  At night, stars shone at similar distances from the col.locs themselves, shiny cylindrical beams crossing universe's walls, energy spurting from holes toward the planetary arches. After one long rotation over the arch’s axis, aWa's col.loc now faced a row of other col.locs with stars in random intervals between them. Light reached her shadowed atmosphere after crossing immense distances, dim, diffuse, blocked by colossal arches. It turned the landscape into an eerie scenery of giant shapes.

  The sky darkened, allowing human eyes to see with great detail the approaching col.loc, dominating their firmament with ground, not the void of outer space. AWa looked up, and she saw a mirror of her motherland. The ou.uo with honey knew that every col.loc had their own internal monsters, some at ease, some in deep slumber, some in rage, and all already integrated their cosmic community in the fluidity of time.

  All but the one right above aWa’s col.loc, the sole exception in the whole universe.

  Blinking lights took half the night sky. Shiny spots spread from the bright col.loc’s side toward the obscured one, as if the lack of illumination caused the ground to react somehow, mimicking the sun in a faint way.

  A pattern became clear, big bright circles connected to other big ones by lines of dotted lights. This pattern showed up in certain spaces, discernible only to excellent eyes. AWa and her group walked slower, taken by surprise by the full splendor of the mysterious col.loc spinning to meet their own. They turned their gaze to the world above theirs, ignoring for a while the horizon toward which they walked forever.

  On the bright half of the sky, where the main sun still reigned, blue fought against white for the supremacy of color. Patches of brown and green lay hidden beneath layers of white, protruding from the blue in massive shapes, although still losing in area for the blue masses themselves.

  They formed and deformed in a sort of mist, gigantic clouds of something ethereal, something resembling the col.loc's dust, and yet unique. A whole col.loc taken by dust, where the blue dominated, the blue from where ous came, where they slept waiting for the passage of humans, a place where strange lights shone on the dark, where the col.loc’s monster sculpted mountain ranges long and massive such as aWa could never hope to see elsewhere.

  Thus, she walked faster than all the others in her chain, closing in on the other extremity. She joined hands with the last one on the other side, closing them in a ring. Their ou.uo adjusted in time, circling the humans in tighter and more uniform orbits. Locked in a chain, they walked sideways, making the ring spin, and they all looked at aWa while she stared at the sky, at those blinking lights and the blue land and the great white dust.

  If something could speak to a human, it would offer a walking invitation. With eyes, with sound, the only valid communication called for meditation and vast expanses on which to exist. For the col.loc's monster, the possibility of being on the surface of another col.loc gave beauty, those blinking lights challenging what it knew of the world. Only the ou.uo dove in the depths of honey and saw the other side, well aware of what awaited them in the sky.

  As aWa began to swing her arms, making the people by her side react with waves of their own limbs, a part of the ou.uo landed on her head and created a crown where they synthesized honey, making sure to also fulfill her backpack. Ignoring the humans' clockwise walk in the same fashion that they ignored the ou.uo’s orbits, the ou.uo threw dust over aWa and them covered her in honey, sticking her feet in blobs of infinity. They hurried to prepare her for the dangerous idea growing in her chest.

  Despite their preference for bonding in groups, humans in the col.loc kept traces of independence that manifested in unpredictable situations. Unlike the ous who joined in ou.uos that worked together to reach the one eternal conscience, humans existed out of time. For them, walking was the only thing, be it with one or with others, and for that, neither past nor future served any purpose.

  AWa stepped back, forcing their circle's break-up. The group opened hands to let her go, respectful of her will, against which they had nothing to do. The humans got back to their first formation, walking side by side, connected by a chain of gripping fingers. Nothing in the horizon called their attention, and the light spots in the dark sky did no more to excite their enthusiasm than the ou.uo circling them. They walked ahead, leaving aWa behind.

  The ou.uo, on the other hand, suffered with aWa's departure. Her own ecosystem enabled honey production only with uiTiu's addition, without whom she'd be back to some twenty to thirty ous following her, using her energy to stay awake.

  The big ou.uo thought of a solution, unwilling to let aWa's new ou.uo part unprepared. They rearranged themselves, making sure that aWa’s ou.uo had a balanced amount of pebbles, rings, feathers, handlers and milkers, leaving the sprinklers behind due to their inefficiency in small numbers. They made it quickly, seeing through the honey what challenges they'd have to face.

  What guided aWa’s steps rose in front of her in a calm pace, measured by her own walking rhythm. A mountain, a big one, grew toward the sky, a pyramid building up from the ground, piercing the blue atmosphere with the intent of touching the mirror above the col.loc.

>   When near one another, the col.locs’ spin slowed down, attracted to the neighboring arch, making sure that whatever wandered in one had the possibility of crossing to the other. Each colossal arch had only a tiny area of near contact as they revolved on the axis around the universe’s walls, and to bridge the gap, the col.loc's monster had to push the ground and make its best to reach the other side, limited by the land’s stretch limit.

  Although accessible to human legs, the mountain’s slope challenged human feet, slippery and soft. AWa fell and rolled, stopping short of reaching the bottom, her own arms slapping the ground to mitigate inertia.

  Lacking natural boulders or recesses, the mountain presented an uphill climb on a rubber sheet with occasional oil spills. The land underneath had a rich geography, filled with stones and small stuff, but it all remained concealed from human perception. It lay dormant under the crust, reachable by the ou.uo and not by aWa.

  Her ou.uo worried about her troubles, being her ecosystem, and consulted with honey. They remembered when they had used honey to create a small tower around the humans, and had an idea. The handlers dove in the ground to collect dormant pebbles and crossed them in rings coated with honey, so that dust and honey served as ligament.

  They attached it on the elastic floor, watching with relief as aWa placed her foot in front of the boulder, using it to climb the mountain in safety. The ou.uo then tried to speed up their work and make sure that for every step that aWa had to take, two or three boulders already waited for her, guiding her path to the mountain’s top.

  Blinking lights guided both aWa and her ou.uo in their ascent. They got closer and closer to the summit, raised by the mountain that became so tall and massive that it seemed bound to become a permanent col.loc's feature.

  Something passed through them, the white mist, something not made by the dust that they expected, something that stuck to aWa’s skin and didn’t heal her or colored her, something unknown, alien to their lives. And the lights, they shone in clearer patterns now, they formed grids of tiny squares, spaced between each other, tiny bright spots distributed evenly.

  At last, the mountain stopped rising. AWa looked up and saw the sky sliding slowly, a landscape of darkness and strange square mounds passing by her head, close enough that she could touch it if she wanted to. She jumped out of instinct, and by doing so, she realized that instead of falling, she rose to the sky above.

  ∙ 4 ∙ Square mountains

  Whatever lay under aWa’s feet, she had trouble recognizing it, dragging her soles on dry and rough ground. It had not elasticity, no smoothness. Dark because of the night, the dim light of a distant sun illuminated her surroundings, accompanied by a shiny spot near the block on which she fell.

  The ground had pores of its own, coarse, hard as only the pebbles in the col.locs could be. For the first time, she felt temperature in her feet, a fresh coldness that impressed aWa enough to make her stop walking and spread her palms on her belly. She took a deep breath, put her tongue out of her mouth and swallowed the contaminated saliva, then closed her eyes to feel the flavors taking over her body.

  When the new surface's novelty wore off, she tested the floor with two steps. It energized her, it sent nutrients up to her veins, offering fuel to her life's purpose. Standing up, moving slowly, she let her arms fall by her side, overcoming the new ground's initial fright.

  She stood on top of a square mound, a tower high above ground, neighboring several other towers taller or shorter than hers. She walked on a small area, even smaller than the mountain top from the day of her birth. At the edges, parapets at her belly's height blocked her steps, keeping her from falling to the distant ground down below, colored by the white lights of evenly spaced spots.

  AWa made circles around the terrace, watching the horizon with its eternal promise of infinity. The sky, black as pitch, had no stars, no blinking lights, for it was the col.loc from which she came, speeding fast toward a night of its own.

  Since coming to life, traps caught her a few times, puzzles she usually solved by jumping off cliffs. She insisted on walking against the parapet, hoping that it would bend or disintegrate, letting her fall into freedom. It resisted her body weight with the consistency of a mountain, though, despite its thinness.

  From the little memory that she kept in her mind, memory being an unimportant asset in her world, she being the col.loc’s child, born to walk, aWa remembered doing more than just walking. She could jump, she could hold hands, she could climb. If she put one leg above the parapet then the other, she would fall.

  Ready to help, her ou.uo scavenged the strange ground looking for pebbles to use as climbing aids. They found a sterile place, however, devoid of slumbering ous, of dust, of anything. The small amount of honey in aWa’s backpack and crown gave them mere glimpses at time, useless insights, leaving them blind in an empty land.

  The ou.uo looked again into honey, and it saw death. A blast of fear struck their core. The center of their existence, their human, prepared to jump to a place where she would get badly injured. The remaining ous in their ecosystem wouldn't create enough dust in time to heal her from the terrible wounds that the fall would inflict on her.

  They threw all their disc’s dust over aWa, to coat her, shield her, and to blind her. But vision had little importance for a human like her, for one who walked ahead, no matter what lay in front of her. Even the thickest mist presented no barrier to her ongoing advance.

  Noticing their failure, the ou.uo widened their orbits, nearing escape velocity, then aimed their periapsis at aWa’s chest, all hitting at the same time on her rib cage with the full strength of their inertial force. They scattered after impact, regaining thrust and spinning around her to do the same.

  On the second strike, they managed to push her back and make her trip on the floor. Afraid to have hurt her, the ou.uo made quick dust from feathers, rings and pebbles and threw it over her, healing any pain she might have had.

  Every time aWa threatened to jump from the parapet, the ou.uo hit her, and if they could cry, they would, for it tortured them to avoid their death with such violence against the most beautiful thing in the world, their human. Indifferent to her own frustration, aWa changed tactics and concentrated, not against the parapet, but against the tall block in the middle of the terrace.

  A red square made of an even colder substance, smooth, although not elastic, taller than her, smelling of sweet and sour, a light spot shining above it, attracted her attention. She leaned against it, and it budged a little.

  The ou.uo suffered from knowing about the honey without having enough of it. Had they had more, they would foresee aWa’s insistence on the red door, and instead of punishing her for trying to jump off the cliff, they would find a way of directing her to walk in circles on the terrace for as long as the world lasted.

  Instead, she pressed her head on the red coldness of the solid square shape, carved in the tall gray block, and pretended to walk ahead. She didn’t affect any change on the wall, soft flesh pressing on hardened matter, despite a few squeaks here and there, and still, she insisted.

  To get her out of that trap, the ou.uo used honey to study their environment. The red square was massive, a bulky wall, but if something pushed against it, such as aWa’s forehead, its surface would collapse then reacquire its former shape, emitting quick noises.

  It had a protruding cylinder coming out halfway up, from which a handle was extruded sideways at the tip. Being the only thing of different shape in that terrace of squarish forms, the ou.uo rearranged their orbits to intercept the object at full speed.

  Doing so, they pushed the handle down, and before it bounced back to position, the red shape moved away, opening to aWa’s pressure. She stepped in and leaned forward, losing balance. Spreading her hands wide on the floor, she stopped her fall before the ou.uo could regather.

  She entered a new small place without a sky. She looked ahead, and found no horizon, only walls. Small light spots illuminated her way, a down way
, a hole dug in the ground. In front of her, nothing of the smooth slopes guided her across a living land. Instead, square steps, wide enough to fit one foot, led to some dark place.

  Watching aWa take the first step downward on the firmness of straight ground, the ou.uo marveled at that creation. How great to have aWa moving across the world without the constant risk of falling every time!

  Soon, she found another red shape, another door. If the first one had taken her to such a tight and dark place, could the next one show her a wide expanse on which to walk? She leaned on it, while her ou.uo, excited to explore the land, hopeful of finding new humans to increase their ecosystem’s capacity, spun again in unison and hit the handle that opened the door.

  Behind the door, darkness prevailed above all forms, blinding everything. Guided not by eyes, but by distance, aWa crossed the passage to walk until she hit some obstacle again. Lights went on suddenly, reacting to movement in the long corridor.

  Brown doors decorated the walls of both sides, over a cold and porous floor, under a solid ceiling, massive, and unreachable. AWa's head wrapped on itself, distorting her conscience, for she tried to exist in a place where the sky didn’t appear. She walked straight to the opposite wall, having a mere aisle to explore, and got back, disturbed by the limited space enclosing her.

  She leaned on a brown door, meaning to see the other side, images of a wide expanse haunting her imagination. Her ou.uo reacted to her craving, pushing the handle with a well-coordinated attack. It opened, revealing a claustrophobic interior in which aWa had to make countless detours to avoid tripping and hurting herself, filled with blocky gray shapes, small thin black ones, large wide ones at her waist. A darkness worse than the aisle assaulted her, enclosing the ou.uo in the fear of death.